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callmesim · Joined: 27 Oct 2005 Posts: 279 Location: London, UK

I'll be in Japan in a few months and after downloading an earthquake tracking widget, I've quickly discovered just how many earthquakes and tremors take place in the world each week. Coming from Australia I don't think about earthquakes much so was rather surprised at the frequency of them.

This brings me to my questions - how many tremors and earthquakes have you felt in the last 12 months? And which prefecture are you in?

Apologies if this sounds like a stupid-hick question but like I said, I've never really thought about earthquakes a great deal. Shark attacks, yes. Earthquakes, no.

Gordon · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Posts: 5309 Location: Japan

I live in Shikoku and have only felt one in the last year. It was in March in Fu_kuoka, which is a long long way away. I don't think about them much, but my wife sure does.

kdynamic · Joined: 05 Nov 2005 Posts: 562 Location: Japan

We almost never feel them in Toyama. It really depends on where you are located.

nikkeimama · Joined: 22 Nov 2005 Posts: 12 Location: Chiba, Japan

We are in Chiba, and since we arrived in March, I can remember at least 6 fairly large quakes, and quite a few more little tiny ones that felt more like a train was going past (only we don't live anywhere near the train line).

I guess large is relative, but we come from Western Canada. I know the West Coast is expecting "The Big One" some time in the next 200 years, but for now, we don't even get a jiggle, so all the tremmors in Japan had me quite edgy for a while.

I figured we'd had far too many quakes when I stopped freaking out at feeling the house rocking. Only one of our quakes was large enough to actually knock a glass off a shelf, but we've had some good rattling of windows and dishes. Mostly they feel like our house was built on top of a washing machine, with a steady back and forth rocking.

Living only a kilometer from the beach, I worry more about a tsunami than an earthquake.

glsco · Posted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 3:39 pm Post subject:

I live up north, in Iwate-ken, and I've been really surprised at how many there are up here. A couple weeks ago we had three decent sized ones in 5 days. Not enough to do any damage, but strong enough that they woke me up (two were in the morning) or caused me to stop what I was doing in case I had to take some action.

3 in 5 days is definately not normal, but I'd say one noticeable one every two weeks is about average up here. Just off the coast of Sendai has been very very active lately, and they've definately been noticeable.

I also happen to live right beside the shinkansen (bullet train) track, so every half hour or so I get a small earthquake from it racing by.

Glenski · Joined: 15 Jan 2003 Posts: 12844 Location: Hokkaido, JAPAN

2 or 3 up here in Hokkaido in the past year. They usually do little more than cause the laundry to wave about on the drying rack. On Hokkaido, it seems that they are felt more strongly in the Kushiro area, followed by Sapporo.

PAULH · Joined: 28 Jan 2003 Posts: 4672 Location: Western Japan

I am Kyoto prefecture and we probably get an earthquake (a 3 or 4 on the Japanese scale) about once or twice a year. House shakes and thats about it.

Lister100 · Joined: 26 Aug 2004 Posts: 106

I got hit hard in my second week of teaching and 1st month in Japan. It was the 7 that hit Fukuoka (I lived in Fukuoka) late last winter or early last spring. That really "shook me up" for a good while especially with all the after shocks. They even started coming into my dreams. It was a real opportunity in the end to have a great story to tell back home.

ocyrion · Joined: 20 Oct 2004 Posts: 20 Location: Chiba, Japan

I have lived in Chiba prefecture for about 9 months so far. There have been 3 or 4 earthquakes. Two of them woke me up, one of them was quite long and stopped a lot of trains in the prefecture for a few hours. Most of these were 4-5 in the Japanese scale with one being a high 5. According to the Richter scale they were all between 6.1 and 6.9. Smaller ones you generally don't notice.

Serendipity · Joined: 14 Oct 2005 Posts: 36

There are small tremors (and I mean small) in Tokyo every few minutes - I only realised this when I bought a bunk bed.

My bed is about 5 foot of the ground with a big desk underneath. Due to the design and my shameful DIY, there is slight "pendulum effect" that seems to have absolute perfect reasonance with tremors - not what you need when you're trying to get to sleep.

Hence, me being scared witless for months on end; now I'm usually too tired to care. They only last about 5-10 seconds but they are enough to make you think "what would I grab before I launch out that front door when the 'biggy' comes"